


Spotted With Friend

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, M/M, Paparazzi, Stan Also Lives But It's Just a Mention, Tabloids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 11:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Richie always thought being outed would be the most terrifying thing he could face-- or second-most, after a killer clown. When the paparazzi gets pictures of him and Eddie and still fail to out him, however, he realizes he's not scared of being out at all.





	Spotted With Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this post:  
https://ransonejames.tumblr.com/post/188144595703/bc-richie-is-sort-of-famous-he-gets-involved-in#notes

Richie has been avoiding looking up anything about himself since his ‘breakdown’ and temporary disappearance from the public eye, though he hasn’t entirely escaped it. But now… now he and his friends have killed the killer clown from outer space, now he’s home and starting to work again, and his agent is up his ass every other hour with something he needs to be doing if he wants to pull off a comeback, and so here he is trawling through paparazzi photos and tabloid headlines about himself and his fall from grace and recent reappearance. 

The first headline-photo combo isn’t even really a paparazzo shot, it’s something some kid took on their cell phone, Richie collapsed in a hospital waiting area chair looking like shit. HOMETOWN HOSPITAL VISIT. He’d read the article that went with it, and while he wishes the picture had been on any other day of his time hanging around the hospital, the article had been sympathetic. _ Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier spotted spending a lot of time hanging around a hospital in Derry, Maine. While Tozier’s career began with a stand-up set about retrograde amnesia and an inability to recall his childhood, a little digging shows that the comic did grow up in Derry. There’s been rampant speculation about the reason for his recent breakdown, but it’s beginning to look like it may be a family matter. _ Not entirely inaccurate, really. If the Losers aren’t his family, who is? Even after all that time apart, without his memories, they’re just as much his family as his parents are.

There’s another picture, he’d been dragged to lunch by Bill, Mike, and Stan after days of his vigil during Eddie’s recovery. The headline recognizes him and Bill both, speculates on the potential for a bit of stunt casting in an upcoming adaptation of one of Bill’s books. One of him hugging Bev and Ben goodbye at the airport that gets way off the mark with the speculation that he and Bev are having some kind of affair, as if Ben’s not there holding her bag and looking at her like she hung the moon. 

And then, the pictures of Eddie. Under the headline RESURFACED COMEDIAN SEEN WITH FRIEND IN MAINE, two pictures of them at the airport. Holding hands next to a little coffee place somewhere after the security check, sitting side by side waiting to board, fingers tangled together, Eddie’s head on his shoulder. In smaller print, the question of whether this was who he had been visiting in the hospital.

And the next one is Eddie as well, and the next, the next-- he and Eddie at dinner together, leaning in over the table and laughing together, getting out of his car in the medical complex parking lot that housed Eddie’s new PT clinic, eating ice cream in the park. And he thought, when this happened, that it might be terrifying, but it isn’t. It’s _ annoying_, actually, because each headline glides right past the obvious in order to stretch for something stupid-- Eddie is a down-on-his-luck friend, Eddie is an AA sponsor, Eddie is a life coach, he wants to tear his hair out. They’ve been seen _ holding hands_, they were dining at _ Firefly_, where apparently no one got a picture of him reaching across the table to feed Eddie a bite of his dessert, but it _ happened_. A fucking romantic restaurant to take your ‘AA sponsor’ or your ‘life coach’ to.

TOZIER SHARING HOME WITH DOWN-ON-HIS-LUCK FRIEND?, the headline asks, over a picture of Eddie standing on the balcony in his robe and underwear. If the photographer had stuck around, he’d have gotten Richie coming out to drag him back to bed, but there are no pictures of him with his arms around Eddie’s waist, both of them undressed and mussed. 

AFTER PUBLIC BREAKDOWN, TOZIER LOOKING CLEAN AND SOBER WITH FRIEND, another headline. _ Friend_! This time, he’s kissing Eddie’s cheek, arm around his shoulders, the two of them among the tourists at the museum Eddie had wanted to visit. TRASHMOUTH CLEANING UP HIS ACT? is accompanied by pictures at the farmers’ market-- the two of them strolling hand in hand, getting coffee, Richie carrying their things while Eddie looks over produce. Eddie laughing at Richie holding up a paddleball… He scours the articles, and neither even _ speculates _ on Eddie being anything more than a close friend. He feels like he’s in the Twilight Zone. 

“Babe!” He throws his phone down, sprawling out in bed. 

“What?” Eddie pokes his head out of the bathroom. He’s wearing his pajama pants and there’s toothpaste at the corner of his mouth. He has bandages over the scarring across his front, not because he needs them, but because he hates seeing it in the mirror, and Richie feels yet again that he must be the luckiest man on earth. 

“Come back to bed real quick.”

“Rich, I am going to take a shower, shave, and get on with my day.”

“If you haven’t showered yet, you can still come back to bed. _ Please_, baby, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but kindly doesn’t point out that Richie constantly asks when it’s not important, returning to cuddle up against Richie’s chest.

“I should take advantage of you while you’re living by a human sleep schedule. I’m going to miss you when you’re working at night.” He kisses Richie’s cheek, throws a leg across his thighs. “Mm, my man.”

“Your man.” Richie agrees. He tugs a corner of the bedsheet up over Eddie’s shoulder, before he takes a picture of them-- enough that it covers up the scarring on his back. He doesn’t bother covering himself at all, obviously shirtless, his hair a mess. He gets a couple of sots of the two of them in bed together, one where he’s kissing Eddie’s forehead, one where Eddie is tucked against the curve of his neck, soft smile just visible in profile. One where they both grin lazily up at the camera, the bed around them rumpled. 

“What’s this?”

“I need to tweet something that will convince people we’re fucking. You want to pick one of these?”

“... You want to tweet one of these?”

“Well, apparently there are a dozen pictures of us having romantic dinners and holding hands all over the city and one of you on the balcony in your bathrobe, and no one thinks I’m tapping that cute ass. So yeah.”

“Wait, someone took a picture of _ what_?”

“Yeah, if I ever see someone in the bushes down there, I’m calling the cops.” He promises. 

“I’m not okay with this. I can’t--” Eddie’s breath hitches, going just a little wheezy. “I can’t live with creeps hiding out in the bushes taking pictures of me in my underwear, Richie, what the fuck?”

“Eds-- breathe. Breathe. Baby, hey… We can talk about moving to a new place. Okay?” He’s freaking out a little himself, because if ‘I can’t live with creeps taking pictures of me’ means ‘I can’t live with you’, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. “Something with more privacy and better security. We can do that.”

Eddie nods, pressing himself tight against Richie. “Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’ll be good, it’ll be our first real place together.”

“Yeah. And no one is going to harass you in your underwear on my watch. That’s my job.” He kisses Eddie’s temple, feeling that panic ease at Eddie’s soft amused snort. “Only I get to snap sexy pictures of my stud mini-muffin. Speaking of, you wanna pick one?”

Eddie shifts so that he can take Richie’s phone, looking over the pictures. “You couldn’t get my good side?”

“Your ass? Eddie, how _ daring_.”

“Shut up, dipshit.” He keeps the phone in his hand, rolling over onto his other side and dragging Richie’s arm, prompting him to roll onto his side as well to spoon up behind him. He gets an angle on the two of them as Richie starts nibbling at the back of his neck. “Okay, this one.”

It’s a good picture. They both kind of have sex hair going on, even if the sex happened the night before. Richie’s glasses are askew, but that doesn’t do anything to hurt the overall image. He’s smiling even as he’s kissing Eddie’s neck, his hand spread wide over his chest, over the white of the bandages-- they’ll come off, as they always do, at the last second before Eddie hops into the shower, and he’ll let the fogged-up mirror obscure them from his view afterwards until he’s dressed. He’d taped them down into place the night before so as not to have to think about the scarring while they had had sex, and Richie likes to think someday he’ll be okay not doing that. In the picture, the scar on Eddie’s cheek is now on the side hidden against his pillow, his grin is soft and adoring as he reaches back with his free hand to get hold of Richie. 

_ Comedian Tozier spotted totally just being bros with handsome mystery man_, he tweets, adding a few choice heart emojis. 

_ Just to clarify, his identity is not a mystery to me, I’m just catching up on the news about yours truly and I was just wondering if everyone writing a headline about me is that stupid on purpose_. He adds a follow up tweet. And then, after a moment, _ Is there like a contest to see who can get the gayest picture of me and then pretend it’s straight? This is Eddie and he’s a total _ [peach emoji]. _ There’s no wrong way for you to read that, it’s true either way. _

He considers adding something about being a man who loves eating [peach emoji], and then he considers Eddie smothering him with a pillow and leaves well enough alone.

_ @TheRealTrashmouth I thought you wanted to save coming out for your special_, Ben tweets him moments later.

_ That was before I saw a headline wondering if I was dating your girlfriend while all these pictures of me and Eds on dates are calling him a friend. _

“Turn your phone off.” Eddie says, in his best ‘Dr. K knows best’ voice, the one he pulls out on the rare occasions when he really does not want Richie arguing with him-- usually on the subject of Richie’s personal health and safety. Which he guesses not watching twitter obsessively just after coming out kind of is, his mental health. “Come get in the shower with me and then I’m taking you out, no social media.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“A fun surprise, if you’re good.” Eddie gets up, stretching and then slipping out of his pajama bottoms. “We’re going hiking if you’re not.”

Richie grins, scrambling after him and shedding his own pajama pants along the way. He grabs Eddie’s hips, as they stand by waiting on the water to heat, as Eddie carefully peels off his bandages without looking down at his own chest. Richie bends his head to kiss the scar on his back as he does, just to remind him he only cares that he’s in one piece.

For Eddie, he wouldn’t mind a hike. Up to the Hollywood sign, or somewhere in the hills, or around Griffiths, wherever. But…

“I’ll be good if you will.” He promises. “I want that surprise.”


End file.
